She's obviously never been to a convenience store in the United States. Sometimes they've got TONS of porn magazines.

Also, I love her claim that only ugly disgusting men read ero-books, and all women find them "sickening." I guess that's why they don't make porn for girls then. OH WAIT.

Hey, while we're at it, why don't we ban the Bible? That book is chock-full of all kinds of offensive material, like graphic violence and rape. Same goes for the Koran and many of Shakespeare's plays too. Hell, why not just ban ALL books? We should just stop reading and burn them all. Remember, it's for the children!

I'll admit, the idea of adult-material being widely available to children is creepy and taking measures to prevent that is something I can get behind. I don't care if you're into loli, guro, bondage, whatever, but keep it away from the kids until they're mature enough to understand the stuff.

What I take issue with is her baseless asumptions that all people who are into ero-books are obviously perverted morally bankrupt men. If you want to make a good argument, it helps to not make accusations before actually looking at the other perspective.

I once went to a convenience store just outside a military base. As I was checking out, I noticed a rack of gentlemen's literature in clear plastic bags within easy reach. Given the area, they probably think there isn't much need to protect them from impressionable youth, but still.

I believe it's clear that she doesn't fully understand what the law is trying to do. I really don't think the nasty, horrible stuff is what people are really protesting about.

"She was also concerned about the open sale of porn in areas children and women are known to visit"

Seriously, WOMEN? Adult women? Like children, we must be protected from porn? I'm much more offended by that than I am about the possibility of seeing porn openly sold. And what if *I* want some?

If you're lukewarm about this, you're part of the problem. The broad scope of this law is not the issue. Even if they banned 1(one) obscure doujinshi, it'd be a huge loss for freedom and the empire of law. A victimless crime IS NOT a crime. How can you trust a government and a society that will punish you for doing nothing wrong? going to prison for speaking your mind? what's next, certain political views will be considered obscene and dangerous too? some movies considered "problematic"? who the fuck decides this stuff?

Porn available to minors is a fallacy. They can't buy the stuff. Most they can do is glance through if their ninja skills are good enough; if they are, props to the boy. Every child has sneaked into the adult section of the video\magazine store at some point, it's not a tragedy. Girls will just go 'ewww' and won't touch the stuff without a 10 foot pole. Nobody is going to get scarred here, it's just porn.
This is just a bunch of frigid feminazis who think sex is evil whining because they don't know how to enjoy it. None of their concerns are valid. Look at that bitch, looking down on people because of their appearance, you really want someone as shallow and stupid deciding what is freedom?

She's kind of hot.

@Tim: I see what you did there.

"Basically Japanese people are perverted, extremely perverted. Really nothing but perverted, all I think is why. For a long time, the Japanese have been perverted..."
Perverted perverts are pervy? And obviously, all Japanese must be perverted chikan(sp?) otaku because this content exists. *eyeroll*

"Also, how much I hate this, looking at the appearance of ero-book reading men..."
And they're ugly, too, apparently. They should be censored because they are ugly.

Porn of real children is rightly banned because children cannot have given informed consent to be photographed. Drawings are a different thing.

The anti-loli proposal is rooted in the general paedo-paranoia which has been increasing in the last decade. It isn't based on any evidence that porn or paedo-porn leads people to commit crimes.

Distasteful though loli porn is, that in itself is not sufficient cause to ban it.

I don't see why people think kids need to be protected from loli. Of all types of people, kids have the easiest access to naked kids. Only the curious ones care and they are also the ones that figure it out for themselves anyway. Keeping porn out of their hands should be way farther down on the priority list than proper sex education. In the case of kids under 11-12, they don't understand and don't care. In the case of kids in that wheelhouse, teach them correctly if you're worried.

Keeping "obscene materials" out of the eyes of women shows a pretty bad princess complex. Women know it exists, otherwise it wouldn't involve women.

Personally, I think any minor who looks at themselves naked should be convicted of 'distributing child pornography'.

Think I'm joking?

Gonna agree with Tim here, she is pretty hot.

As for her stance on things, I can only assume she was abused as a child or brought up in a super closed household.

Hey, what Josh didn't say was that it should be said that the comments above, taken in isolation, come across as a rant. However, they are excerpts of a conversation with two others so they seem more natural and less strident when you hear them in context. In particular, the last comments are not so much a damnation of Japan but more a playful baiting of the two men.

Furthermore Tim, I hear you entirely and thank you for saying that. I told everyone my feelings in the email. First saw her on London Hearts as a panelist. What I didn't know until today is that she's bi-racial: half Norwegian/half Japanese. Should've known, due to her slightly more exotic complexion and looks.

Oh and finally, it is my translation of the excerpts, and as I didn't take the time to listen to the whole 30 minute radio show [which is available on the site btw as mp3 download], some word choices and contexts I thought of may be inaccurate. Plus I'm not fluent.

Hope that clears some misunderstandings up with her comments. Still, the points people are making are valid, as after all, there are always 2 sides to a coin...even a 2-faced coin...

Take it easy people

> What I take issue with is her baseless asumptions that all people who are into ero-books are obviously perverted morally bankrupt men. If you want to make a good argument, it helps to not make accusations before actually looking at the other perspective.

They don't have much in the terms of good arguments, so they're trying to rely on dehumanizing their opponents. The whole "porn consumers are inhuman & porn makes you lose your humanity" has been a standard talking point for the moralist censors in Japan for a while now. It's getting to the point where it's becoming a bit of a running joke in the eroge scene.

The sexism and baseless stereotyped assumptions (ugh the people into it are ugly losers/doesn't like this flavour of porn? frigid bitch with issues) on both sides need to DIAF.

I'm a woman and I'm not appreciating (understatement) having that hijacked to make a point about how someone finds porn icky. Enough with the sexuality-denying paternalism please.

>>Any character that regardless of actual age has an appearance of being under 18, and has a possibility of causing youths to lust for or possibility of bringing this fantasy to real life,

This can only end badly with something so vague. It's like there's no awareness of the massively varied and strange things that turn people on. The author's works gotta suffer 'cause of a chance that someone gets off on it? FFS, it's not even looking at context, not that would make it any better.

And the whole shaming 'only bad people are into that - you're not a *bad* person are you?' tactic is disgusting. Shit like this makes it so easy for the censorship to be rebranded as a morally-justified crusade against everything that's Ruining Society.

She needs a husband!

"Basically Japanese people are perverted, extremely perverted. Really nothing but perverted, all I think is why. For a long time, the Japanese have been perverted..."

Then catch the next flight to a western country and shut the fuck up, you already have a head-start with the brown hair dye.

Yamamoto has okay points in that excerpt, but she changed the subject--so, they're irrelevant. This whole debate is over the definition of obscenity, not just its distribution. And it's mostly about obscenity in drawings, not porn of people (which already exists just fine in Japan). Yes, it's gross that the girlie mags are out there and that people look at them in public (creepy). But that's off topic, lady.

I had a friend in college who was attractive and very feminist, and who said basically that all porn should be banned except for "erotica" which she happened to like. I had another friend who, in all honesty, was likely to never find love in his life because was that ugly, and he knew it. He was an avid fan of all kinds of porn, because he is a human being and because American has chosen to forbid all other forms of release for him (if he were in Japan he could just visit a "soapland"). How the hell could the first person (who could have any relationship she wanted) tell the second what he can find visually exciting?

The assumption that what people do in their fantasy life MUST translate to their real life gets me seeing so much red that the other stuff she said doesn't even register.

@DKnight: Agreed. People think that just invoking the word "children" means that truly Orwellian thoughtcrime-persecution is acceptable, and it's maddening. It's not even a slippery slope thing, once you start prosecuting POTENTIAL crimes it's like "welcome to the very bottom of the slope."

I guess she never heard of the term, keep it 2D. I think that most couples can counter her statement that both of them read ero books. Sorry to offend anyone but I think she is being a sexist bitch over this whole matter.

A verbatim transcription of my only dating-related skirmish with this repressive attitude evidenced by Mona Yamamoto, for your pleasure ...

MS. CRABBY PANTS: "You have porn here."

ME: "I'm quite aware of that."

MS. CRABBY PANTS: "Why do you have porn?"

ME: "I like porn."

MS. CRABBY PANTS: "You like porn?"

ME: "I believe we have established this already."

MS. CRABBY PANTS: "Why do you like porn?"

ME: "It depicts hot Brazilian women getting sexed in the butt."

MS. CRABBY PANTS: " >:-( "

I remember walking into a Family Mart and seeing porn for sale. The irony of this kind of stuff being sold at a place called "Family Mart" made me laugh for hours.

That kind of thing would never fly here in the States. God, I love Japan.

@ Jon

Yeah, I'm aware of that kind of thing. I try and not be one of those people that hate the United States because it makes me cool but so much about that country is mind-bogglingly repugnant on every possible level that I can't help but hate it.

I mean, I recently heard about a Texas school board editing Thomas Jefferson out of their history textbooks because he has a liberal bias. And when they were called on it their excuse was "The textbooks we've been using up until now had too much of a liberal bias so we're evening it out with a more conservative perspective". Their justification for why they edited the man on the fucking nickel out of history classes is "fuck you liberals". I think America could solve its energy concerns by strapping magnets to the founding father's corpses with how hard their turning over in their graves.

I think it's ironic that she reminds me of Maria Ozawa

@Hen Na Otoko - Haha, and now I'm off.......... ;)

I knew there was something I wasn't thinking of.

It seems this kind of people is the same everywhere: a bunch of spoiled attention-seekers who aren't beyond anything to achieve their spotlight goals.

@BoukenLou
Well in this day and age of declining marriage and birth rates, "family" may very well mean 'otaku and his anime wives'.

@Mad March Harris: Sometimes I wish we could peacefully split the US into the theocracy that people like the Texas School Board members want, and the other half, where all the decent people could live. I thought I knew what the US was about in the '90s, so the last ten years have felt increasingly like living in the Twilight Zone.

@peterinjapan Yeah, I see what you mean. I have a hard time agreeing with anyone with an "everything should be banned, except what I personally find suitable" mentality.

Karen and Mad March:

If we're going to indulge in tangential bits of socio-political observation here, then I might as well take the snowball and roll it into a winter boulder.

Though similar in some ways, the greater cultural contrast between Japan and the United States has ever been of particular fascination to me. Beyond its often simplified portrayal of East Asian values differing from Western values, the gulf between the societal foundations and historical voices of these two specific countries is, in all likelihood, the most profound on Earth. I believe this because I cannot conceive of any other two industrialized nations with more unique and deeply rooted cultural identities than Japan and the United States of America.

Sadly, but necessarily, both of them are being forced to confront their own existential crises right now (which is not a coincidence if you understand money & finance). That's a different beast I have not the time for here.

Anyway, the nature of all the distinctions that separate Nippon and the good old USA, or at least of most of them, can be illustrated by how differently Americans and Japanese perceive the phrase, 'Rule of Law.' In the Japanese psyche, the Rule of Law is the inherent obligation of the individual to obey society and the government. In the American psyche, the Rule of Law has traditionally referred to the subordination of government to higher forms of law and the primacy of the individual.

In America, individuals precede collectives. Therefore, collectives should be secondary most of the time. In Japan, collectives precede individuals. Thus, individuals should be secondary nearly all the time.

In Japan, people are conditioned to value approval from others above all else. In America, people are conditioned to value their self-determination above all else.

In Japan, harmony is achieved by the threat of shame and assuming humility as the default position. In America, harmony is achieved by the threat of retaliation and assuming pride as the default position.

Are these absolutes? Perhaps not. Still, in my studies I have found them to be true enough as a general matter. What's important is that upon inspecting how the centuries of developments have shaped the cultures of these two countries, you start to realize that many seeming contradictions in both societies are hardly 'contradictions' at all -- especially as it relates to morals and social conventions.

With respect to throwing around words like 'theocracy' (or 'socialism', for that matter), I find that the preconceptions and assumptions which tend to accompany the usage of such terms against whoever the target is, are being increasingly exposed as the illusions that they are. Young people are finally wising up to the artificial paradigm of conservatives vs. liberals. 'Divide & Conquer' has only ever served the purposes of enslavement. It is an artifact of oligarchy.

Being a Hispanic atheist in my late 20s, born, raised and still residing in the New York metropolitan area, older people I talk to (including Southerners and Midwestern folk) are usually confused by how I sound like I'm coming from 'the Right' on many issues and from 'the Left' on several others. In this very blue of blue States, my closest friend is a self-professed Christian, a highly informed black male who views homosexuality as some sort of disorder, which he tolerates but will not accept. If I've learned anything recently, it's the obsolescence of stereotypes and the nonsense of demonizing others simply because of a disagreement over one or two issues.

More people in our age group are similarly pulling their heads out of their asses. And with this world-changing collapse of the international monetary structure underway, such newfound awareness couldn't come soon enough. :-D

I'm catching whiffs of a nationwide Internet porn filter, books that only light up if you are over 18, and men forcing women to cover up because they may be sexually arousing.

That sounds so ridiculous, it will never happen.

*bangs head on wall*

THIS is what I was afraid. THIS is what I was talking about in my other posts.

Point is, she's in it for the stupid bans. She's obviously a damn moron who doesn't realize the very freedom of speech is what allows her to run her retarded mouth on an every day basis. I don't care if this is part of a rant or a conversation or WHAT, the moment she babbled out WE WOMEN hate porn by default she lost any respect I had for her as a fellow woman.

Please STFU and don't tell us women what we're supposed to do or like. If I want to read porn I'm gonna go to the nearest bookstore and get myself some of the most hardcore shit I can find; not every woman out there is a frigid, stuck up feminazi bitch.

You want to make porn harder for the kids to get? FINE; that's why we've got the age limit to get the stuff! there are already measures (whether correctly executed or not) that don't trample on our freedom to read and watch what we want while making sure the children don't get their paws on porn. If the children still get it, it's because 1-parents are obviously lacking in supervision and 2-children are horny (teens) and ARE NOT STUPID. Kids have ways of getting the stuff tehy want, even if they have to dig around trash to get some.

Kill her with...

Oh, wait.

She's kinda cute.

Just brainwash her instead.

She misses the points here about the freedom of expression. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't have a right to exist, citing back to the whole rapelay controversy. Honestly now, lets say we don't like anything that promotes equality between men and women, that would be our freedom of expression but you'd become the thought police and strip us of that too. Get over it lady, if you want to make a ban go right ahead, but make it one that isn't so vague that will wipe out the entire genre of shoujo manga, let alone the waves and waves of moe anime that's been keeping your industry afloat so far.

It is ignorant to say that women don't like porn either, that's denying the entire push going on since the end of WWII for women's equality and rights. It's like saying women can't have sexual desires at all, and that if you do it's wrong and you need to go kill yourself or get mental help. They make porn for women too, so you need to get yourself out of your little world of ignorance. How about that affair awhile back that lost your job as an anchor? You clearly didn't have sexual urges at that time right?

Grow up Mona, and get over the fact that kids don't grow up to be 18 all innocent and stupid when it comes to sexuality. That's why you teach kids about sex in schools and make sure they have the information they need before they become consenting adults. Don't turn around and blame the society you live in either, cause if you don't like it, you can just get up and leave. It's women like you that blame loli for otaku and low birthrates when it's your own fault. Who has the child? Women, and who only want the wealthy men? Women. Face it, in a decade or two you won't have enough people alive to make an argument to.

You aren't fooling anybody, lady. We all know you're huge closet shota lover.

I think Mona(who is quite lovely to look at) is assuming that most women share her same views about what is considered perverted and, also, what is harmful for children. Her stance may just be a political stunt to stay relevant in the media's eyes for all I know. We are living a day and age where the number of viewers is more important than actually having something of relevance to say. Money is more important to a lot of people than their souls. Probably because they aren't aware they have one? Not sure why so many people "sell out" and are so weak in character. It would be interesting to see an actual monetary amount "sell out point" above people's heads!

The more you try to define what perversion is....the more you find it is actually as subjective as any art. For example, pantie shots are generally quite tame but some people find them shocking and abhorent.
Are these images REALLY harmful to a child's psyche?

Consider that we are all born naked and most of us take our clothing off when we take a shower. Aren't we all VERY familiar with male and female anatomy? What is it that many of us find SO offensive? Different people will tell you different things and be surprisingly fervent and clear cut about what is "offensive". Is everyone wrong?

I think what most of us REALLY want is to never have to look at OR experience anything we find unpleasant. I think we have to let that go, though and we have to acknowledge that this is...after all...LIFE! :)